


Anathema

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Kuron (Voltron)-centric, Operation Kuron (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Spoilers for season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 06:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13311993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: he's know all along that something was wrong.  He just - never knew how wrong it really was.  Shiro from season 3 and 4.  Takes place after Shadow and day 4 of Black Paladin Week.





	Anathema

He felt it the second before it happened. Something shot through him, seared along with the link he shared with Black. For a split second his heart seized up in his chest and all he could do was relive the feeling of the first time Zarkon had ripped Black away from him and torn through their connection like wet paper.

-”no”-

It choked out of him, an exhale, a cough, a plea

and Black turned, spun like flotsam in a cosmic stream, and then plunged forward with a roar, body all but shifting to make it more streamline as power poured into alien engines and the great lion all but tore the empty cold of space apart as it leaped forward and charged.

“No!” The panic was back and he worked the controls, knowing already that it was pointless. He could feel the strength of the tug that wasn’t his through Black, the call the lion was responding to. Nothing he did made a difference, the stick dead in his hands.

“Shiro!?” Lance’s voice, laced with surprise and a surprised panic.

“I can’t - my lion’s not responding.” He bit down the panic, the choking despair, the ‘not again, dammit, why again?’, smothering them out of his voice when he answered but he might as well have left them in. The words were enough on their own to tell his team, only moments ago peacefully practicing maneuvers with him, exactly what was happening - and to bring up the old memories from their first face off with Zarkon. He reached down through his bond - one he’d worked so hard to strengthen, one he remembered having to reassert - fought to push power into it. To push himself back into it. But there was no response from the Black Lion and he felt like an echo in the pull, hardly even there. 

“No,” it hurt, it tore at him to have this happening again. How many times would he be tested - and fail - as the Black Lion’s paladin? With Black as the judge no less. “No. Not again.”

“Shiro!” There was Red, out the side screen, the only lion fast enough to catch up to Black - but no where near strong or large enough to stop it. 

“Hang back, Lance,” if he was going into Zarkon’s trap, again, he wasn’t going to drag his team in. “Keep on me but don’t stay too close. If this is a trap you need to rally the others.”

There was silence, a long moment of it, but it was a sign of how Lance had grown that instead of arguing, his answer, when it came was:

“I’m on it. Don’t worry, Shiro. We won’t let anything happy to Black, or you.”

“Thanks,” he knew he sounded tired but - he was. He was so tired of the fight. Of having to prove himself over and over again to the one being in the entire galaxy that should know him well enough to decide, once and for all, if he was worthy or not. His fist came down on the control panel next to him but even frustrated he’d used his human one and all it did was smack pointlessly. Should he try to do more? Wasn’t it better to cripple Black then let it fall into Zarkon’s hands? His Galra hand might be enough, sear through a panel and start ripping everything inside it out. Do enough damage internally to force a shut down?

Except the very thought of deliberately harming Black was anathema. To cause his lion pain, with his own hand - he couldn’t. Even if he should - his mind completely balked from the mental image. No. He couldn’t. Not even to keep Black from Zarkon.

He felt the tug throb, strong enough that it vibrated like a bass drum, down through his own connection and -

that was wrong. Even at his worst, he didn’t remember Zarkon feeling that strong. 

That - bottomless.

Had the Galra emperor found a new way to boost his energy, a new way to reach through his connection as a previous paladin? Something that felt

deeper.

Last time it had been feverish. A frantic, chewing, grating, clammy-burning feeling. It had made Shiro’s stomach churn, made his skin itch. Made something in the back of his mind scream hoarsely in long mindless screams.

This was different.

This was being caught in the center of an electric storm, icy bursts, flashes of energy and light, wild inexorable wind. It was falling into an ocean, being swallowed by the weight of water, being pushed and pulled down and knowing there would never be a bottom. And it was the stars, sharp and brilliant and burning. It was - he realized as the next wave of it hit him, muted through Black’s own connection with him - intoxicating. Like breaking atmo for the first time or that first second push of engines against gravity as your ship lifted off. His hand, he noticed, was shaking. Again.

“You have to stop,” he tried to put demand and order into his voice but it came out closer to a plea. 

Black sailed on.

“Whoa,” Lance’s voice reminded him the other pilot was even still there, had his head jerking up from where he hadn’t realized his chin had come to rest on his chest. Ahead of him, filling Black’s screen, was what looked like the husked out remains of what had once been a space station or ship yards, too picked down to be easily identifiable now but large enough to still bear a whisper of its past. Black slowed - but only to maneuver better. Angling inward in graceful looping spirals through the wreckage like a dancer going to meet their partner and it made Shiro’s throat close up tight and ache. Black had always been beautiful but it was rare he’d thought of the lion as graceful. Except it was now.

“Its an old Utang station. They were a dead race even when Altea was young.” It was Allura’s voice over the comm. So the rest of the team must be within scanner range at least - or Lance was feeding imagines back to them. She sounds a bit reverent - and worried. Shiro tried to pull himself together.

“All right, everyone look sharp. Its safe to assume this is a trap and we’re already one lion down. Everyone take up a perimeter around the station but don’t hesitate to bug out the second something looks off. Keep the comms open. Lance - follow me in. Zarkon’s not getting the Black lion.”

Except, even as he said it, it felt wrong. This wasn’t Zarkon’s style. This was subtle and private, nothing flashy or loud about it. Not a single Galra cruiser was registering on the scanners, not even a fighter. Zarkon just didn’t do things this way.

“Be careful,” The princess’ voice again. “The Uta were the stuff of legends on Altea. Their technology was - mythical. There might still be something left behind.”

Fey out of the old tales, Shiro though randomly. Doorways in hills and deadly rings of mushrooms in moonlight.

“I’m picking up a power source,” Pidge sounded young but determined not to be. A pause. “Its in direct line with the Black Lion’s current route.”

Was that it? Some long dead race’s trap or beacon had snagged Black? Could it be that it hadn’t been Zarkon at all? But - the almost constant thrum he felt down Black’s bond felt - familiar. Not to him but - to Black. He could feel that through their own connection. How much did they not still know about the lions from a different dimension?

“There,” Lance, again and, again, Shiro had missed it. Black was gliding down to a platform or what was left of one and at the base of the platform was a small building or hanger, something made of a metal that gleamed like oil across a puddle of water, slick colors that hinted at more depth below them. Shiro felt the hair on the back of his neck rising, suddenly missed his old closer cut, heard his own breath, hollow, in his helmet. Black’s claws touched down more gently than Shiro had been aware was possible given the lion’s size and the great beast immediately hunkered down, resting its chin against the ground and opening its mouth.

Eager.

And then - nothing.

The lights dimmed into standby mode but there was no sudden ejection, no Galra scrawl crawling across the screens, no fierce desperate push against him through the bond. Just - silent waiting.

“Shiro?”

Hunk this time and Shiro inhaled and stood up.

“Still here, Hunk.” He paused, looked through the screens at the hanger beyond. The sensors were registering low levels of atmosphere still, the structure large enough to have its own mild gravity. Breathable. Shiro left his helmet on, his visor down. Nothing happened. He decided.

“I’m going out.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lance was on it immediately and his first reaction was to cancel that call. If it was a trap the fewer of them in it the better. But -

Lance was long range, with better eyes for details and that would still leave them three lions airborn.

“All right. Put up Red’s shield though. If its a trap let’s not make it easy for them.”

If it was a trap - how was he ever going to be able to trust Black again?

He couldn’t let his lion be a danger to the rest of the team.

He was halfway down the ramp, one hand on the back of Black’s incisor, when the door to the hanger opened. 

-

The world seemed to fall away as opal light poured out. Suddenly the ancient station was jeweled, as if veins of living color ran through every finger of it. Amber golds, crackling greens, tropic water blues, sunrise oranges and sunset reds. Altean pinks. Shiro had never seen such breathing colors before and something primeval inside him responded, leaped with delight and pure joy, a response as old as the dawn of human time. It hit him like a wave, washed over and through him and it took him a long moment to recover enough to notice the black figure that was approaching through the light washing out of the doorway. Except it was taking too long, the steady determined stride of the figure eating up more distance than was there. As if it moved through not just space but time or dimensions or perhaps life itself to reach them. Approaching them over the weight of ages. He felt something inside him rebelling at the thought of finding out what it was, of giving it time to reach them, seizing him in his stomach and twisting. Primal again but this time it was the primal need to run.

“Shiro?” Lance’s voice and had he ever sounded so young?

“Hold your position. If things go bad I want you out of here.” Had he ever sounded so young himself, he silently thought. 

The figure drew closer. 

Became more and more human.

Became - familiar in a way Shiro couldn’t explain but that sent fear pouring deep and wild through him.

No. No, they needed to leave. Whatever it was - they had to leave. Now

But his feet stayed stuck where they were and he felt as if his joints were melting.

The figure cleared the doorway.

Was finally more than a dark blot against the opal light. Had a form.

Had the Black Paladin’s uniform on.

And then the helmet came off.

“Keith?”

His own face looked from one lion to the other. Except it wasn’t his face.

The hair was shorter cut on the sides and in the back.

The white lock was longer in the front.

The eyes were brighter.

He watched himself start across the tarmac, watching the smile on that matching face grow, watching the energy, barely restrained, in the way he, the other, barely, kept it to a walk instead of a run. Listened to the way his own voice said:

“Black!”

And suddenly he realized what the bond was that had swept over him and wrenched the Black Lion around to come to this place. He recognized the bone deep steady thrum of it for what it had been. It had been a purr. 

And he recognized why it had been so much stronger and more true than his own connection.

“Guys?” he heard the excitement and worry in Shiro’s voice as the man broke into a trot toward Black. Toward his lion. Where he’d always belonged.


End file.
